Douglas Corrigan

Douglas Corrigan ( born January 22, 1907 in Galveston, Texas, † 9 December 1995 Santa Ana, California ) was an American pilot known that after a transatlantic flight in 1938 as a Wrong Way Corrigan ( "wrong -direction Corrigan " ) been.

Life

Corrigan was an aircraft mechanic and as an employee of Ryan Aeronautical one of the builders of Charles Lindbergh's plane The Spirit of St. Louis. After Lindbergh's first transatlantic flight Corrigan also wanted to undertake such a flight; as a target hovered before him Ireland, the home of his ancestors. Since 1933, he flew a Curtiss Robin OX- fifth He was considered a daring aviator, and his employer forbade him several times his acrobatic maneuvers.

After a 17 hour flight across the North American continent from Long Beach, California to New York City on July 8, 1938, he was on July 17, 1938 fly back to Long Beach. However, he flew from Floyd Bennett Field airfield, Brooklyn, in the direction of Europe and came after 28 hours at the airport Baldonnel in the southwest of the Irish capital Dublin. Later he claimed that a navigation error at the unauthorized trans-Atlantic flight was to blame: Clouds and difficult lighting conditions have meant that he had read his compass wrong. This representation, however, is hardly credible, since he had already made several technical changes to his monoplane to prepare him for a transatlantic flight, and as he had several requests from 1935 to 1937 without success for a permit for a non-stop flight to Europe. His " navigation error ", therefore, was more likely a deliberate protest against an administrative bureaucracy that prevented him from fulfilling his great dream. Corrigan, however, never admitted publicly that he had deliberately flown to Ireland.

Corrigan and his plane returned by steamer back to New York. Although he had broken numerous laws, he was given only a mild punishment: His pilot's license was confiscated for two weeks. Upon his return, the New York celebrated him with a ticker-tape parade, the more viewers participated as the parade after Charles Lindbergh's great triumph. However, Corrigan was disappointed that his idol Lindbergh not praised his performance.

He quickly became known as " Wrong Way Corrigan "; this nickname was in the U.S. even as phrase input in the common parlance. In the year of his flight, he wrote his autobiography That's My Story, which was published in December 1938. Also merchandising products like a backwards continuous clock he brought out. In 1939 he played himself in the movie The Flying Irishman.

During World War II Corrigan worked as a test pilot for the U.S. military and flew for the U.S. Army Ferry Command. After the war he was a pilot in a small California airline. In 1946 he stood as a candidate in California for the conservative- Christian Prohibition Party for a seat in the U.S. Senate, but received less than two percent of the vote. In 1950 he settled in Santa Ana and he dedicated himself to the orange cultivation. He died there in 1995.

Film

• The Flying Irishman, 1939 ( with Corrigan in the lead role )

Writings

• That's My Story. EP Dutton & Co., New York 1938 / Robert Hale, London 1939
• Boston's Logan International Airport, gateway to New England. In: Airliners, the world 's airline magazine. ISSN 0896-6575, Vol 77 ( Sept. / Oct. 2002), pp. 32-43
• Foreword to: Walt drill, drill Ann: Tales Up!. Aero Publishing, Fallbrook CA 1971 ISBN 0-8168-8800-0 ISBN 0-8168-8804-3 or